One of the primary factors considered in the design and development of software applications is ease of use. Often the difference between a successful software application and an unsuccessful software application is decided by the user's experience when interacting with the software. One such competitive segment of software applications is Business Intelligence (BI) applications, such as, Crystal Reports® by SAP®. A report is a document that includes information automatically retrieved (i.e., in response to computer executable instructions) from a data source (e.g., a database, a data warehouse, and the like), where the information is processed, structured, and formatted in accordance with a report schema. The schema is the template of the report, defines a base query, and specifies the form in which the information should be presented. In creating and updating reports, users are given the ability to include content or elements or objects on a freeform canvas/document. Such freeform documents enhance the understanding of the business model by providing professional reports suited to individual and/or business needs.
Freeform canvas or document does not force users to layout the elements in a predefined way. Therefore, the freeform documents facilitate users to layout the elements as per their desire for spotting and analyzing business data. In general, the freeform document facilitates providing historical, current, and predictive views of business operations in a user friendly way. However, the freeform documents have one or more following limitations during modification or manipulation of the elements in the freeform documents.
Currently, the freeform documents lack structural associations among elements as they do not force the user to layout the elements in the predefined way, which makes creation and modification of tabular layouts tedious. Conversely, enforcing a structure such as a table or a grid does not allow flexibility in layout of a strict structure. Therefore, a method to provide structured interactions without enforcing structure in the freeform document, i.e., to extrapolate tabular structure in a freeform document, would be desirable to facilitate easy manipulation of elements in the freeform document.